The $479 Radeon RX 6700 XT clearly stole the highlight at AMD’s “Where Gaming Begins: Ep. 3” occasion on Wednesday, however earlier than Radeon chief Scott Herkelman confirmed off his shiny new graphics card, he delivered one other very welcome announcement. AMD’s Smart Access Memory characteristic is coming to Ryzen 3000 processors to make your video games run quicker.
AMD debuted Smart Access Memory alongside its incredible Ryzen 5000 processors. Smart Access Memory is constructed atop the PCIe specification’s non-obligatory Resizable BAR characteristic and permits your CPU to completely entry your graphic card’s reminiscence buffer, an improve from the same old 256MB chunks. The tweak can present a efficiency uplift starting from negligible to notable, as our Smart Access Memory testing with the Radeon RX 6900 XT revealed. Depending on the sport and determination, we noticed body charges soar by as much as eight %, and AMD says Smart Access Memory can enhance efficiency by as much as 16 % in best-case eventualities.
Either manner, it’s nice to see AMD spreading SAM’s wings. Recent business chip shortages have prevented many would-be patrons from getting maintain of Ryzen 5000 CPUs, limiting the attain of Smart Access Memory. Ryzen 3000 chips bought like gangbusters and you may nonetheless, you recognize, really purchase them—in contrast to Ryzen 5000 chips. This ought to assist the finally-freed characteristic get rather more use out of avid gamers right this moment, forward of Resizable BAR’s march in direction of seemingly changing into an business commonplace in future CPUs, GPUs, and motherboards.
